Moreover, patronage did not confine itself to a purely material and administrative support, as the State necessarily does. Besides sending a present in season, the ladies were still more ready to distribute the small but not less precious coin of tendernesses and compliments. We are here returning into their proper domain, and an intellectual man capable of withstanding this influence would be a rarity. The lady author who praises a writer smacks a little of her trade; Veronica Gambara, after overwhelming Aretino with rhapsodies, cries naïvely, "Praised by you, I shall live a thousand years!" It was "Kae me, I'll kae thee." But from a genuine lady of rank, eminent and bountiful, who asks for nothing, one charming phrase, even though it be qualified and far from flattering, is glory, and a glory that can be solicited without humiliation. "They say I am an aristocrat," wrote Taine, and he was, as we all are who pretend to lead men's minds. That is why we need this sybaritism,-need to be sustained and perchance guided by a smile. There is hardly a philosopher or poet of the 16th century whose pages are not illuminated and gladdened by the smile of some high-born lady.

66

How can we analyse this smile? We could not without seeing it, and we only know it very indirectly. We divine it under an infinitely caressing word; in a pretty diminutive, my little sister," "wifie"; in an affectionate superlative; Vittoria Colonna calls her friend Dolce "Dolcissimo," and speaks to him, with a quite natural grace and without apparent exaggeration, of his "divine sonnets," for which she has not words enough to thank him; with her friend Bembo she permits herself to gush forth familiarly in artless enthusiasm. What a curious litany is the correspondence addressed to that "very magnificent" rogue Aretino, who highly valued the honour done him, and took all possible advantage of it! The writers are the marchioness of Mantua, with her grace and reserve; Mary of Aragon, "the sovereign marchioness of Avalos," on particularly good terms with him because she has not altogether given up hope of turning him into a monk; the duchess of Urbino, warm, gushing, who calls him "my magnificent most loving lover"; then the good ladies who have lost their hearts to the man of the hour, who take him as he is, a scoundrel but famous, and who write to him as the "fount of

eloquence, astonishing, admirable, miracle of nature, most virtuous, (yes, you are!) most wise, my father, my brother."1

The relations of a lady with her protégés were established by slow degrees, or simply through her chancing to hear of a work that bespoke her practical interest. The lady learns through her secret agents that a book is about to appear, in prose perhaps, perhaps a history; she wishes to have the first peep at it; the author, taken by surprise, makes excuses with profound modesty, but sends his manuscript all the same; and the ice is broken, the circuit is complete. The connection will continue under various forms; the writer tells her in confidence of his various works, then in his turn begins to beat the coverts for talents of hers that are lying concealed. In return the lady announces his work urbi et orbi, and takes his friends to her heart. A real intimacy is set up between them, sometimes so entirely spiritual that they never even see each other. Thus, before publishing his Courtier, Castiglione submitted the manuscript to Vittoria Colonna under the seal of the profoundest secrecy. Vittoria kept it rather a long time, and when at last she had to return it, she excused herself very prettily, being still, as she says, only half-way through the second part: she omits to add that she had lent it rather indiscreetly. She has no suggestion to make, except perhaps that he should not give the names of the ladies whose beauty he is praising in a book intended for the public. Otherwise she applauds everything with all her soul the freshness of the subject, the refinement, elegance and animation of the style. She is horribly jealous of the persons whose words are quoted in such a book, even if they are dead. As to the passages on the virtue and impeccable chastity of women, she adores them and considers herself, as a woman, honoured by them; but on this point she prefers not to say all that is in her mind.

With Michelangelo she exercises the same supervision; she begs him, in a charming note, to send her a

1 Very few poets had the audacity of Clément Marot, who, harassed by his creditors, went a-begging to the Queen of Navarre, beslavering her with love the while: she replied with a dixain. He acknowledged receipt of it ironically, saying that on the strength of her verses his creditors have called him "Monsieur," and have permitted him to borrow again, which he proceeded to do.

crucifix he is working at, and to come and have a chat.1

Far from dissembling the patronage of which they were the objects, the writers and artists boasted of it. In all sincerity they believed women to have been created and sent into the world to inspire them with intelligence. If they had their portraits painted seated in their studies, it was not in the midst of a litter of books, weapons, or carpets, nor even with an air of deep thought or abstraction; it was simply as natural men, writing beside a little Cupid who serves them as tutelary deity. It was accepted without question that a woman's hand must shake the bough to set the mind winging its flight. "My mind, my strength, my Pallas, is Lydia," exclaims Catti.2 Antonio de Gouvea declares that he had no suspicion of what was in him till the fair-haired Catherine of Bauffremont discovered him as one discovers a treasure under the snow: "I should have thought the snow cold, but lo! it was fire." Michelangelo sings the same song in every key: "Through your fair eyes I see a tender light which my blinded eyes could not have seen.... Wingless, I fly with your wings; through your quick spirit I am unceasingly uplifted towards heaven.... I have no other will than yours; in your soul my thought has birth; my words are moulded in your mind. I am like the moon, who never shines in the sky but as reflecting the brilliance of the sun;" and he adds this profound saying: "O Lady, who by fire and water refinest and purgest the soul for happy days, ah! grant me to return never more to myself!" That was the simple method by which many women in those days directed the minds of men.

We must not exaggerate: we do not pretend that you must everywhere chercher la femme, that without her nothing is possible, that she has confiscated the key to all

"My heart's friend, I beg you to send me the crucifix for a short time, even if it is not far advanced, so that I may show it to the gentlemen of the Most Reverend Cardinal of Mantua. And if you are not very busy to-day, come and talk to me at any hour that suits you.-Yours to command, the Marchioness of Pescara."

2[Usually known as Lydius Cattus. His Latin poems in praise of Lydia appeared at Venice in 1502.]

[A Portuguese writer (1505-1566) who spent the most of his life in France and taught philosophy at Paris. He is chiefly notable for his crushing reply to Ramus's attacks on Aristotle.]

human learning. On the contrary, she has done little for the exact sciences; she has contented herself with piercing the heavens or clambering in somehow or other. But the great kindred of impressionable beings, every man who has lived by beauty and sought after happiness, from philosopher to artist, from talker to poet, every man capable of feeling an emotion, has owed much to women. "Emotion, which is only an accident in the life of man, is it not woman's whole existence?" And in such a matter, can a better judge be found? Woman is freer from prejudice than man: "she does not need to give abstract reasons for her enthusiasms: her passion, her pity well up spontaneously while man is still discussing and deliberating. And in so doing, she almost always sees more truly."1

Women are the eternal guardians of the Beautiful, and it cannot be said that in this respect the Renaissance introduced any absolutely new idea. Long before, noble châtelaines used frequently to shelter under their roofs the churchman employed to illuminate their Books of Hours, and princesses encouraged the ballad-monger and the image-vendor. Women have always cultivated their souls! But it was a new thing to devote this fervour and enthusiasm to a religion of beauty. In other directions, the women have been condemned; but their aesthetic influence has seemed legitimate; and, in a word, "the works they patronised, the châteaux built for them, have endured, when the doughty deeds of knights on the battlefield have hardly left a trace."

1 Paul Bourget, address in the French Academy, Dec. 9, 1897.

CHAPTER IV

INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE

(Continued)

THE influence of women declared itself in certain wellmarked results. In the first place, it led to the germination of what may be called a technical literature: that is, of works intended to prove the legitimacy and necessity of feminine sway.

The classical type of this literature is Boccaccio's book, Of Illustrious Women. Boccaccio lived in a backward age, which is the excuse for certain epigrams of his; but he remained none the less the women's favourite writer, because he had had the courage to ransack antiquity, to quarrel with Virgil, to extol Dido, and to collect for the first time a multitude of immortal examples-Cleopatra, Lucrece, Semiramis, Sappho, Athaliah. Nothing, therefore, was safer than to republish, amplify, and imitate his work in every shape and form, and the opportunity was not lost, God knows!

In addition to this Boccaccian literature, which was already extensive, we must note the appearance of a numerous family of semi-philosophical, semi-historical writings, devoted to the glorification of the reigning sex; winning causes never lack defenders. The names of Bruni, Portio, Lando, Domenichi, and many others would certainly merit a page in the annals of feminism; Benedetto da Cesena specially demonstrates the honour and virtue of women, Capella their excellence, Luigini their beauty. The feature common to the most of these works is that while claiming to be very lofty, abstract and impersonal speculations, they are all the time aimed more or less covertly at the